I don’t want to make you wait for part V so I’m posting both parts together. Even so, I must admit I’ve been avoiding writing the end of this story, but it’s real and true and needs to be finished.

Jason, Linda and Michaela left for school in Nebraska, in the summer of 2007. It was a long way, but we were planning to road trip out there as soon as we got a new car that would serve us more safely as we crossed the mountains.

I wasn’t particularly good at getting on the phone. I never have been, actually. They were well acquainted with this fact, though, and Facebook helped a bit. No matter, they were embedded in our hearts as family and we ached for their presence. We deeply grieved their leaving, but knowing they were enjoying their new life, doing things that they loved, was comforting.

Every time we heard from them Jason was ecstatically happy to be back in the world of theater. He wanted to teach because he was the kind of person who wants to share. He wanted to pass along his passion for the stage and help those younger than himself to find their own ways and discover their valuable places in life. He was a giver.

In October of 2009 I woke up to a text message from Jason. It was something about the hospital and ominous tests, but I couldn’t associate it with my vibrant, magnetic brother. I decided it must have to do with another friend. All day though, that text kept interrupting my other thoughts. By evening the air was ominous. Something in me knew that the ground under my feet was shifting. By 9:00 we knew that Jason had been admitted to the hospital in severe pain, and we were waiting for test results.

I spoke with him in the hospital the next day. “I didn’t want to be a wimp if all I had were hemerroids,” he said, and I scolded him and laughed. We talked about the schools where he’d already sent his Curriculum Vita, looking for a teaching job. I was supportive and enthusiastic until he got to one in a city I rather loathe.  I was silent for a moment and he roared with his big Jason laugh. We agreed to hope for a different place to go.

Test results started coming in and I got over my phone aversion quickly. I had to know what was happening. The news wasn’t good and we asked if and when they’d like us to arrive in Nebraska to visit. Thanksgiving, we decided, would be a good time. It needed to be soon. Jason had stage four rectal cancer, and a bunch of us started getting back together on Fridays to pray, while Jason was on speakerphone. We took up a collection to get them a juicer, and I started trying to find funny gifts I could send to try to lighten their spirits. Jason got a colostomy. He actually begged for it after a few horrific times in the bathroom. He went to start treatments in New York City, where they had the best specialists. His wonderful family joined him there.  His brother, Matt, helped him travel.

The treatments started and he went home to Nebraska. He moved down to the basement because he was so nauseated he couldn’t stand to be jostled in bed. He felt sidelined and alone a lot, despite all the love so many tried to give. His Mom moved in to help for a while.

He was gray when we got there. He tried to hide his suffering but I grew up with someone in chronic pain. I know what it looks like. The spark had gone out of his eyes. I discovered that all I wanted was to be near him then, to soak up his presence as though I could keep it with me in a jar forever. We were still talking as though there was hope, but something in me knew. I just knew he was leaving, but hadn’t yet boarded the train.

We helped with his furnishings in the basement so he could be a little more comfortable and then we had to come home to work. Only a few weeks later, on 01/11/10, he did board the train and left us behind, bereft and longing. And yet, we couldn’t help but notice the exact date of his departure as one final message of hope. Jason was forever seeing repeated digits on the clock. They’d come to be a kind of language between him and God. They were reminders to him that he was right where he should be. I can’t tell you how often I see repeated numbers now, or how I sense his presence in those moments.

I flew to Nebraska immediately with a friend, and Keith followed a couple days later. If there was one good thing to come out of it all, I became connected with Jason’s warm and loving family. We all clung together for days as though we were on a life raft. It didn’t seem possible that a man full of more life than anyone else on earth would be gone at the age of 37. It was immutably wrong. Yet, it was true.

Here’s the thing. I don’t have any clear lesson to give about God here. I know Jason had a clear and shining faith and I believe he is with God now. He’s doing wonderful things, leading theatrical productions and writing musicals. What I want to avoid though, is even a hint that God allowed it all to happen for a reason, so Jason and all of us would grow and be better people. If that’s true, well, I’m not investing in that God. That’s the mad scientist God I grew up with, and whoever invented that guy can have him back. So I guess I lied. There is a lesson, at least about the God I believe in, after all. It’s a broken planet. There are many, many things that happen here that are fundamentally and excruciatingly wrong. God is with us in that. He teaches us how to love each other so we can survive and have life again, later. He groans with us and collects our tears. He takes us home, in the end. I don’t know why he doesn’t intervene more except for the whole “free will” bit, but I refuse to accept that it’s because we’re in a crucible he designed so we’d be perfect, like some crazy Aryan family. If he is love, that is not okay with me. I can’t reject God altogether, either.  He was Jason’s God, and Jason knew stuff.  I’ve experienced things of my own. I believe God sent us Jason and his family so I could have my first brother, be seen, hugged, accepted, and nursed in some sense, into accepting life. Jason would be heart-broken if I were to lose all those precious gifts because he’d simply had to shift dimensions. He’d want me to love more, to accept love more, to continue to open my heart to God and health and living my life as deeply as I possibly can, and I try each day to honor that.

Jason was right about one thing. He wasn’t the last brother I would have. I have at least two more, to date. I grew up without much family, and things were messed up with Keith’s family and me, too. Jason opened the door to having adopted family. I can share my life and figure out who the safe people are. And I can look over again at the clock, see 11:11, and know Jason is well, and near.